Social Media
With the broad growth in broadband internet all over the world and the substantial increase in the power of computers, social media websites have been growing in popularity for the past few years. Photo sharing sites allow people to upload as many pictures as they want and share them with friends, family and the rest of the world. Other sites allow you to upload individual photos and create small movies with narration from them. There are a myriad of different creations you can make with all of your photos, audio files and movies - both personally and professionally.
Photo sharing sites like flickr.com and snapfish.com all people all over the world to upload their digital photos and movies to these websites and share them with friends and family all over the world. Flickr.com has the distinction of allowing its users protect their files with Creative Commons copyright licenses. It, along with many other photo sharing sites, allows their users to use special tools to edit and/or clean up their photos before posting them to web. Sorting of photos and movies is done through the use of tags and grouping of like photos/movies. Flickr also allows their users to use their service as a photo hosting site. This allows their photos to be embedded into other pages on the internet like blogs.
Animoto.com allows users to automatically create videos from uploaded pictures and music. The system analyzes the music a user has uploaded and carefully matches the tempo of the song with the picture transitions to create a new, custom movie. There is a pay service which allows you to have more control over the output as well as choose from a library of music on Animoto's servers. Microsoft Photo Story 3 is similar to Animoto.com. It is a free download from Microsoft. Photo Story 3 allows a person to take photos and easily create a movie with narration, background and captions. Photo Story does have the option to export it's final product to a movie file or burn the movie directly to a CD or DVD. Movie files are encoded in WMV format and can be used in Windows Movie Maker.
Vimeo.com, Youtube.com and Teachertube.com are all video hosting/sharing websites though, each site is aimed toward a specific audience. Youtube.com is more of a general video hosting site which allows anyone online to join, upload video (under 15 minutes) about any topic and comment on other users videos. Videos can be in either SD or HD as long as they stay under a 2 gigabyte limit. Once uploaded and verified that there is not copyrightable material in the video, it is posted online and consequently available for embedding in other websites, like blogs. Vimeo.com and Youtube.com are very similar with one major exception - content. Only non-commercial, personally created videos are allowed on Vimeo.com. No adult, commercial or video game based videos are allowed. Teachertube.com is essentially a content-filtered version of Youtube.com. It is specifically aimed toward educators and students with the expressed purpose of making video, audio and any other teaching resources available for use in the classroom or in a training environment. Teachertube.com has grown in popularity in educational institutions due to the fact that most content filtering systems will block youtube.com and leave teachertube.com open.
Jing.com a unique tool which is very useful to educators, trainers and students alike. It is a piece of software which is free for download at jing.com. Jing enables a person to take a screen shot of your desktop or record a video of the actions of the user. Narration can be added while the video is being recorded. All videos are limited to 5 minutes. Once the recording is complete, the user can choose to have it automatically upload it to screencast.com, save it to the user's computer. If a user chooses to upload it to screencast.com, a link is automatically placed in the computer's clipboard so the user can instantly share the video with their friends and colleagues. Screencast.com acts as the online video host (similar to youtube.com) for Jing. Screencast allows you to store and organize all of your Jing videos. Saving your Jing video to your desktop allows you to import these files into editing software such as Camtasia.
Voicethread.com is a unique website which allows a person to upload, narrate and add captions to an uploaded image or video and then allow other members to add comments to the video in the form of recorded voice or written word. Comments are kept in sequence so no additions are lost and people can follow the discussions which may develop over time.
The majority of the tools listed above would be easily integrated into an educational environment. Youtube.com and flickr.com are the only exceptions to this. Since they are open to the public, there is way to filter the contents of the site to ensure the students are not exposed to improper materials either in or outside of class. Animoto, Jing, Voicethread, Teachertube, MS Photo Story 3 and Vimeo are all easily controlled and filtered by the teacher and technology department of a school district. A teacher in any subject area could easily create a lesson plan which would require the students to use any of the approved tools above to create a simple video. For example, a music teacher could have a group of students create a video about the brass instruments in an orchestra. Using MS Photo Story 3 and teachertube.com, the group could easily create a video on this subject. The video below was created using MS Photo Story 3, Windows Movie Maker and hosted at teachertube.com. The quiz section at the end was added in Windows Movie Maker.
With the broad growth in broadband internet all over the world and the substantial increase in the power of computers, social media websites have been growing in popularity for the past few years. Photo sharing sites allow people to upload as many pictures as they want and share them with friends, family and the rest of the world. Other sites allow you to upload individual photos and create small movies with narration from them. There are a myriad of different creations you can make with all of your photos, audio files and movies - both personally and professionally.
Photo sharing sites like flickr.com and snapfish.com all people all over the world to upload their digital photos and movies to these websites and share them with friends and family all over the world. Flickr.com has the distinction of allowing its users protect their files with Creative Commons copyright licenses. It, along with many other photo sharing sites, allows their users to use special tools to edit and/or clean up their photos before posting them to web. Sorting of photos and movies is done through the use of tags and grouping of like photos/movies. Flickr also allows their users to use their service as a photo hosting site. This allows their photos to be embedded into other pages on the internet like blogs.
Animoto.com allows users to automatically create videos from uploaded pictures and music. The system analyzes the music a user has uploaded and carefully matches the tempo of the song with the picture transitions to create a new, custom movie. There is a pay service which allows you to have more control over the output as well as choose from a library of music on Animoto's servers. Microsoft Photo Story 3 is similar to Animoto.com. It is a free download from Microsoft. Photo Story 3 allows a person to take photos and easily create a movie with narration, background and captions. Photo Story does have the option to export it's final product to a movie file or burn the movie directly to a CD or DVD. Movie files are encoded in WMV format and can be used in Windows Movie Maker.
Vimeo.com, Youtube.com and Teachertube.com are all video hosting/sharing websites though, each site is aimed toward a specific audience. Youtube.com is more of a general video hosting site which allows anyone online to join, upload video (under 15 minutes) about any topic and comment on other users videos. Videos can be in either SD or HD as long as they stay under a 2 gigabyte limit. Once uploaded and verified that there is not copyrightable material in the video, it is posted online and consequently available for embedding in other websites, like blogs. Vimeo.com and Youtube.com are very similar with one major exception - content. Only non-commercial, personally created videos are allowed on Vimeo.com. No adult, commercial or video game based videos are allowed. Teachertube.com is essentially a content-filtered version of Youtube.com. It is specifically aimed toward educators and students with the expressed purpose of making video, audio and any other teaching resources available for use in the classroom or in a training environment. Teachertube.com has grown in popularity in educational institutions due to the fact that most content filtering systems will block youtube.com and leave teachertube.com open.
Jing.com a unique tool which is very useful to educators, trainers and students alike. It is a piece of software which is free for download at jing.com. Jing enables a person to take a screen shot of your desktop or record a video of the actions of the user. Narration can be added while the video is being recorded. All videos are limited to 5 minutes. Once the recording is complete, the user can choose to have it automatically upload it to screencast.com, save it to the user's computer. If a user chooses to upload it to screencast.com, a link is automatically placed in the computer's clipboard so the user can instantly share the video with their friends and colleagues. Screencast.com acts as the online video host (similar to youtube.com) for Jing. Screencast allows you to store and organize all of your Jing videos. Saving your Jing video to your desktop allows you to import these files into editing software such as Camtasia.
Voicethread.com is a unique website which allows a person to upload, narrate and add captions to an uploaded image or video and then allow other members to add comments to the video in the form of recorded voice or written word. Comments are kept in sequence so no additions are lost and people can follow the discussions which may develop over time.
The majority of the tools listed above would be easily integrated into an educational environment. Youtube.com and flickr.com are the only exceptions to this. Since they are open to the public, there is way to filter the contents of the site to ensure the students are not exposed to improper materials either in or outside of class. Animoto, Jing, Voicethread, Teachertube, MS Photo Story 3 and Vimeo are all easily controlled and filtered by the teacher and technology department of a school district. A teacher in any subject area could easily create a lesson plan which would require the students to use any of the approved tools above to create a simple video. For example, a music teacher could have a group of students create a video about the brass instruments in an orchestra. Using MS Photo Story 3 and teachertube.com, the group could easily create a video on this subject. The video below was created using MS Photo Story 3, Windows Movie Maker and hosted at teachertube.com. The quiz section at the end was added in Windows Movie Maker.